Friday, 7 August 2009

Which cover would you go for...?

Every so often, I get the same book through the post from both the US and UK publisher. Instead of tossing a coin to see which one I'll read (and giving the other copy away without really talking about it) I thought it would be fun to compare the covers and also find out what you guys think of them as well. It worked quite well last month so I thought that I'd go for it again and see what happened.

This time round, both ACE and Orbit sent me copies of Charles Stross' short story collection 'Wireless'. I enjoyed 'The Jennifer Morgue' and 'The Atrocity Archives' but couldn't get into 'Saturn's Children' so it will be interesting to see what 'Wireless' is like...

Here's the UK cover,

And here's the US cover,

This time round I find myself going for the US cover over the UK one. There's a little bit too much happening on the UK cover; sometimes 'simple' is more effective and the US cover has the edge in that regard. What do you think?

I agree. The US cover is for me, but then I am in the US. I guess that means they have their target market well... targeted. The wide open spaces seem to be a trend in book covers here lately - I guess they are leaving room for the imagination.

I like the UK one more... but then again the US cover for Saturns Children was so wretched I can not see me ever liking an american cover for a stross book again. Its no f'n wonder the us has such a high teen pregnancy rate